TYLER, Texas—During the second cross country meet of the season, Northwestern State is aiming for improvement from meet one.

Following a first meet in which many athletes set personal bests, NSU's teams head to the campus of UT-Tyler for the UT-Tyler Cross Country Opener on Saturday.

The men run an 8K, beginning at 8 a.m., while the women run a 5K starting at 8:30 a.m.

While NSU ran this past week, many others are running their first race of the season, with many athletes running their first collegiate meet as well.

"I expect a lot of personal bests from my returners," head coach Payten Vidourek said. "I think John (Klein) is going to go out there and have a great personal best. With my younger guys, running their first 8K, I can't expect too much, but I hope for the best in their first race of this distance, running almost two miles further than they ever have in high school, so that is a big jump. Overall, it will be a great meet because we've never a meet of this length this early."

Among the teams running are fellow Southland Conference member East Texas A&M, as well as Centenary, Prairie View A&M, Texas A&M-Texarkana, UT-Dallas, Wiley and host school UT-Tyler.

The men, led by a veteran in fifth-year member John Klein, posted several bests with some crushing their previous times.

Klein finished in third place in the first meet at McNeese this past week, running a 15:31.56 in the 5K.

Andrew Kent had a strong showing as freshman. Running in his first collegiate cross country race, Kent showed his promise, clocking a 16:30.80 to finish eighth out of the 23 runners.

A trio of Demon returners set personal bests in their first meet as sophomores, as Owen Rue (16:58.73), Kaden Elliott (17:28.69) and Mason Bayne (18:02.81) all ran personal bests by a wide margin.

On the women's side, Thea Ring led the Lady Demons with a time of 14:53.47 in the 3K to finish 18^th at the last race at the McNeese Season Opener.

Gracie Evers, one of the lone Lady Demon returners, finished just behind Ring in 19th, clocking a 15:00.54.

Teodora Samac (15:58.16) and Cherie Neal (16:37.77) finished 20th and 21st at McNeese to round out the Lady Demon finishers.

"We're in a pretty good spot," Vidourek said. "The last meet was a good rust-buster for us. A lot of schools are opening up this week, so it is nice to know we already have a race under our legs.

"We're a little bit more confident. This past meet was solid. We had some good performances and overall, it was good to see them break off some rust. Moving up to an 8K this week, it will be good to get something of this length under our legs this early since that is the distance at the conference meet.

Following the race, NSU comes home for the lone regular season home meet Sept. 12, the NSU Pre-SLC Meet.